The Pilot and the Padawan
by hoygoodfisher
Summary: Alternate Universe: A botched memory wipe by the Jedi Council leaves Revan with a bit of a split personality. It's KOTOR, but not as you know it.
1. In with the old, in with the new

As he strode across the plains of Dantooine, accompanied by only his blaster and the astromech droid he had purchased on Taris, Revan sighed inwardly. No doubt the intolerable pilot and the sanctimonious Padawan would have noticed his absence by now. He had, at best, mere minutes remaining before the Jedi Council realised his ploy. Wishing to step outside the chambers to 'consider' their offer of Jedi training was an excuse that likely wouldn't hold water for more than half an hour. He knew as well as they did that the offer was no offer at all, but an order.

Revan's problem with the Jedi Council wasn't that they had attempted to erase his mind and implant in him the mind of a stranger. It wasn't even that they had pointlessly 'offered' to train him anew in the ways of the Force. It was that they had bungled the entire operation, from start to finish. They might have succeeded in storming his flagship with a strike team lead by an incompetent Padawan, but it was only Malak's predictable betrayal that had brought that shambles of a plan to fruition. When all was said and done, though, and he had been brought helplessly before them, they had attempted to replace his memories as the Dark Lord with memories of being a golden-hearted smuggler.

They had managed to fail at this in ways Revan had thought impossible. He was unsure if it had been the Council's incompetence or his own resilience, but their procedure had been a failure. However, the memory _implantation _had been – arguably – a success, and the results were nothing short of bizarre. Some sort of merger had taken place, and he now found himself an amalgamation of both lives. The most bizarre part was that he didn't much care: all they'd done was give him a new set of skills to complement his old ones, in addition to a strangely fractured personality. Shades of both Revan and the false smuggler - whose name he had already forgotten – now coloured him, and he wasn't sure what to do with himself.

It was sheer confusion at his current state that had led him to cooperate with the pilot and the Padawan as they stole a ship and escaped the doomed city of Taris. However, the long hyperspace voyage to Dantooine had allowed him to process his situation slightly. He was unsure how he was going to slip past the Council and make good his escape, but an old memory had struck him: a ship he'd stowed away on Dantooine in years long past. If it was still there, he was in the clear. If not – well, he didn't want to consider the consequences of failure.

One thing he was certain of was that he would need credits. A second was that the name Revan would send up red flags everywhere in the galaxy. A third was that every Jedi and Padawan on Dantooine would, no doubt, be searching for him now. He needed a new identity, but before that he needed a haven.

As Revan reflected, he felt a squelch beneath his sole. He glanced down, observing the pile of kath hound dung now hugging the sides of his boot. As he cursed, he spotted the offending creature nearby. It was impossible, but he was willing to swear it wore a smug expression as it brayed at him. A blaster bolt silenced it, and Revan strode onward. T3-M4 beeped disapprovingly. One thing the Council had unwittingly bestowed upon him was nigh-flawless aim with a blaster. Another was a new-found distaste for lightsabers.

No matter which way he sliced it, this wasn't shaping up to be one of his better days.


	2. The Pilot and the Padawan

The intolerable pilot and the sanctimonious Padawan – or Carth Onasi and Bastila Shan, as they were more commonly known – were in a bit of a bind. Revan (as Bastila knew him), or "that damned smuggler" (as Carth knew him) had vanished. This left them in an awkward situation with the Jedi Council, who had just realised they had been duped. Operating on the theory that she'd brought him and he was therefore her responsibility, the Jedi Masters had despatched Bastila to locate and retrieve him by any means necessary. Other teams of Jedi Knights and Padawans had also been deployed on foot into the Dantooine wilderness, told that a valued guest of the Council had gone missing and that they feared for his safety. The Jedi seemed convinced, but Carth was growing suspicious of Bastila's reticence. As they prowled the fields and forests south of the Jedi Enclave, he spoke up.

"Seriously, Bastila – who the hell is this guy? There's no way he's just some soldier. This search party is enormous. Every Jedi in the Enclave's gotta be out here combing for him." He grunted. "Hell, the entire time we were stuck on Taris, he managed to avoid telling either of us his name. Did you notice that?"

Bastila paused to navigate slowly through a particularly dense clump of underbrush before replying. "To be honest, the matter is a delicate one, Carth. Many of the details are classified by the Council, but I can tell you that he is no mere soldier. To be perfectly honest," she lied, "when the two of you rescued me on Taris I assumed he was simply a particularly exceptional soldier who happened to be Force sensitive. After bringing him before the Council, however, I learned him to be a former Jedi Knight thought lost for years. He appeared to have lost his memory. The Council wanted only to help him restore it, but something must have panicked him and he fled."

Bastila was pleased with the lie. It was a textbook example of the Jedi way of obfuscation – everything she had said was true, from a certain point of view. Carth was less pleased, but the vague explanation settled him into a tense silence for a time. After an hour of searching in silence, he spoke again.

"There's a footprint in that dung."

Bastila turned to look. Though disgusting, it was also accurate – and, perhaps, their first actual clue in the search. Examining further, she noted what was likely the dung's creator – a dead kath hound splayed on the grass, a blaster hole in its forehead. She scowled. "Neither the dung nor the blood has dried yet," she observed, "so he can't be far. Let's move." She oriented herself to match the footprint's direction, and took off at a jog. Carth reluctantly followed, beginning to wonder what the hell he'd gotten himself into. Branches and bushes whipped and pulled at him as Bastila gradually increased her pace, seemingly becoming more sure of their course with every step. She remained untouched by the foliage, and he assumed she was using the Force to keep her path clear. His cheek stung as a branch carved a painful reminder that he was not privy to such protection, and he seethed at her neglect.

Without warning, the two spilled out of the dense brush and into a small clearing bordered by rocky outcrops. Bastila stopped, as it had just become abundantly clear that they were too late. An enormous, tattered camouflage tarpaulin lay discarded across the grass, and both of them stared impotently at the ship that was already rising from the clearing. As it cleared the atmosphere, Bastila turned back to Carth.

"Come on. Back to the Council. Now."


	3. Meet Cal Renning

Revan reclined luxuriously in the ship's lounge as he reflected on the day's frivolities. The _Peregrine_ was a ship he was deeply fond of, and it was a stroke of luck to find it where he had left it so long ago. That the camouflage had withstood the elements – and that no wanderers in the forest had discovered it – were nothing short of a miracle, and he was thankful. Judging from the distance between the Enclave and the _Peregrine_'s hiding place, and going on the assumption that any searches would have to be done on foot due to the hostile terrain, he estimated himself to have at least an hour's head start on his inevitable pursuers. He thought it unlikely they would be able to get into space in time to follow his hyperspace wake, so he had some time to think his situation through properly.

First and foremost, he needed a new identity. He searched his memories, both false and real, to concoct a new name that sounded as bland as possible. Soon, one came to him.

Cal Renning. It was a name that surely appeared millions of times in government databases, and it was a start. Next, he needed a new appearance. Stepping into the ship's refresher, he coolly regarded his reflection. Shoulder-length brown hair, deep brown eyes and a haggard, drawn face with several days of stubble loomed back at him. The eye colour would have to wait until he could purchase either some coloured contacts or, preferably, implants to change his eye colour. The hair he could deal with right now.

An hour later, it was a very different Revan who stepped from the ship's refresher. His head shaved completely bald and his scruffy beard transformed into a neatly trimmed goatee, he was almost unrecognisable – even by the few who had known what he looked like under the mask. He nodded at no one in particular, and sat back down in the ship's lounge to continue pondering. Before he could sink into thought again, a loud chirp sounded near his ear, startling him back to reality. T3-M4, the small astromech droid he had purchased during his brief adventure on Taris, was whistling and beeping angrily.

Revan didn't doubt that he knew why. The _Peregrine_ had been sitting idle since he had stowed it in the clearing five years prior, while he was at the height of his influence with the Republic. He had purchased it and had it placed on Dantooine as a contingency measure; when he planned to return to the Jedi Council following the Mandalorian Wars he had not been sure of their reaction. As such, he suspected an exit strategy would not go astray. Things had turned out considerably differently since then than he had anticipated, but his insurance had finally paid off.

With the sums of credits the Republic had lavished upon him as the war began to turn in their favour, he had spared no expense on his insurance policy. He had commissioned Corellia StarDrive, which had existing Republic contracts and was more than happy to please him, to design and build a one-of-a-kind light freighter. After five months and some truly enormous deductions from his credit account, the result was the _Peregrine_.

Though initially reminiscent of the _Destiny_-class light freighters, the _Peregrine_ distinguished herself with narrow, forward-sweeping protuberances concealing an impressive array of fixed turbolasers – in addition to twin top and bottom-mounted swivelling turrets. Her satellite array was also unusual – set firmly into the prow on a base capable of rotating and changing angle. While this conferred a small weakness in the ship's ability to pick up some signals without physically changing orientation, it also provided an immense advantage in the satellite's resilience – stray laser fire was unlikely to simply knock it off, unlike a more traditional mounted satellite. Revan considered it well worth the trade-off. Her hyperdrive was also far beyond standard – when pressed, she was likely in the top ten fastest freighters in the galaxy, at least at the time of construction. From his time aboard the _Ebon Hawk_, Revan didn't think he could make an accurate comparison. He was, however, fairly sure the _Peregrine _could give the _Hawk_ a run for its money.

What Revan considered most important at the moment, however, was that Corellia StarDrive had provided, as a courtesy, an extremely luxuriantly appointed interior. The lounge he was sitting on was the most comfortable he had felt in years. T3-M4 chirped angrily again, and his realised that he had, indeed, sunk into thought again. Revan didn't doubt that the ship had probably degraded somewhat in the five years it had sat exposed, and he decided that he had better accompany T3 to the engine room to find the source of the problem.

As he entered the engine room, T3 hot on his heels, he was surprised to discover nothing seemed wrong. He looked down at T3, perplexed. "What's the matter, T3?" he wondered aloud, and was immediately answered by T3's angry chirps as he moved in the direction of the toolbox on the workbench. The problem quickly became apparent: T3 simply could not reach the tools, and he squeaked pathetically as he tried to manoeuvre his arm to reach them. Revan chuckled.

"Don't worry, little guy," he smiled, "those are my tools. Check this out." He walked over to a small port on the wall, which was T3's height. "Plug in here," he said. As T3 did, a small shelf of tools – designed for ease of use with astromech droids' multifunction arms – slid out. T3 whistled appreciatively.

"Not bad, eh?" Revan drawled. "This is why I spent the big credits. Was that all you wanted?" After another affirmative chirp from T3, he made his way back to the lounge to continue forming a plan of action. As he did, a terrible thought hit him.

_The Star Maps._

Suddenly, not a shred of doubt existed in his mind. That was why they had kept him alive. That was why they had offered him training. That was the endgame of their ploy: to trick him into leading them to the Star Maps, and to take the easy path to the Star Forge – the path Revan himself had blazed previously. Revan doubted they even knew of the maps' existence, let alone the Forge, but he was certain they knew of the ancient structure on Dantooine where he and Malak had discovered the first. And what better guide along the way than Revan himself? Everything fell into place, and he felt a grudging respect for the simple genius of the Council's plan – even if their own bungled memory wipe had already foiled it. Whether the Council would wish to destroy the Star Forge or take its power for their own when they discovered it was unknown to him, but either outcome was unacceptable. Revan would not allow it – and neither, he suspected, would Malak. His old apprentice was still fully consumed by the dark side, and would wage bloody war against the Republic and the Jedi to stop them from taking action against the Star Forge.

It was precisely such a battle, however, that Revan wished to avoid. Though the Council's actions had left his memory foggy in places, a dim voice reminded him of the terrible threat from unknown space he had foreseen. Revan's course was clear to him: he must sabotage any attempt by the Jedi Council to obtain the data from the Star Maps. Malak was a simple creature, and unprovoked he would merely continue in a holding pattern of relative stability, punctuated occasionally by atrocity. If provoked by a threat to the Star Forge, however, a battle so vicious and brutal would ensue between Malak's limitless forces and the Republic that both would be left in tatters, ripe for the picking.

Revan suspected that the pilot and the Padawan he had earlier travelled with (Carth and Bastila? He thought so) may already be on the hunt for the maps. With him gone and his trail cold, the Council would no doubt have shifted to a secondary plan of action, and those two seemed the likeliest candidates to pick up the scent from the temple on Dantooine. Even with his sabotage of each map upon gaining its data on his first journey, Revan suspected the maps' self-repairing technology – born of the Infinite Empire – would have begun to fix the damage. The Dantooine map pointed to the locations of others: Tatooine, Manaan, Coruscant, Korriban, Kashyyyk, Corellia and Tython. What he wasn't sure of was which of the planets the map would display, if any. How fast could it repair itself? He didn't know.

What he did know was that he didn't have much time, and that he was already en route to one of the maps' locations. He would just have to remain undercover and sabotage each of the maps once again, and pray that the Jedi hadn't gotten to them first.

Suddenly, the ship lurched as it dropped out of hyperspace. The newly minted Cal Renning had reached his destination, and a brief flash of text on the cockpit screen informed him that the _Peregrine_ had been granted landing clearance. Taking the controls, he prepared to land on Coruscant.


End file.
